Poems
"Hey Stampede, how 'bout a poem?" Taurus lived as poet in New England, even published some material, before he moved to the desert and became a vigilante. Zachary Norman, writer and lead designer on Interstate '76 provided some notes to each poem. = Poems and notes = Looking out the window of your room onto a wet rainy day Main street under a slate gray afternoon sky The light on your face is soft and dim under the lace curtain And the streets are empty In the distance, there is a flash and a rumble Clouds sail the sky like giant wooden ships On a blackened evergreen sea Capped with foam Zachary: This one is captured from a moment of personal history in Delaware. I was attending the wedding of my best friend and ex-girlfriend (long story - but a good one) and I ended hooking up with her younger sister, during the reception! I spent the night and next day with her at her place. I captured the moment in a poem. I'm a storm torrent across a slate-gray sea I rush in billowed reflections a fast, fast dark sky over an Edinburgh's meadow's wet I bolt white high through snowfall cold I am lightning in the night I sprint like fire across a match head And leap across lakes of dream-stuff Over ancient walls Past armies fast as fast is Faster than quicksilver can fall into the sun I, bounding, prance unstoppable to you My all My everything dream Zachary: Again a personal one - I lived in Edinburgh for a while. I was in love and wrote about the feeling. This is my favorite poem - of those I have authored. It's a high pitched sound Hot rubber eternally pressing against a blackened pavement A wheel is forever A car is infinity times four Zachary: This one is from Taurus. He's playing around with the sound of the tire on the pavement and his general love of cars. From where I lie The oceans are deep and dry Empty The sky is black smoke bearing winter's frozen gifts It will snow in this land for a thousand years And I will sleep under it...forever Zachary: Another one from ol' Taurus. I made him obsessed with death and notion "the END" - a true terminus. It has to do with a history I made for him in which his family was murdered when he lived in Boston, murdered by early auto-felons. My dream It takes place in the white room, in back The plaster walls echo sounds The brown wood floor is cold and solid beneath my brown, bare feet This place was a nursery before Now it is empty Save for the hollow sound of my voice Zachary: Again from Taurus - he muses on the nursery of his child, emptied after her death and the selling of all his furniture. I wrote it with the images of drafty, woody, Back Bay brownstones in mind. http://www.jeffwofford.com/i76_poems.html# This window above the Charles Wire embedded in cold frames the world Across white space to the frozen shore I see through curls and eddies of falling snow The once green field And a birthday on the grass A party for three in the Boston sun All now covered with snow Zachary: This one is a mix of Taurus' history and my history. The poem depicts a view I had from one of the windows at Boston University, where I got my undergrad degree. Through Taurus' eyes I placed the melancholy memory of his child's birthday. This one was written for Interstate with my memories of Boston. Copley brought me to a monument Quiet before the crunch of solitary footfall through ice An obelisk stands in the winter city Its relief tells of a death and justification The precipitation of war And my own memories Zachary: I once took the green line and got off at Copley in Boston at the park. I was upset and needed to take a walk - get some distance and some clarity. The air was brisk and cold and the wind had hardened a layer of ice on the snow. It was night and I walked alone in the park and found myself in front of a monument, a memorial to the American colonists who were fired upon by redcoats and died at that very spot. I wrote the poem during I'76 about the memory of that powerful moment. I'm silver smooth Bathed ten times a second in an aerosol fire Five thousand degrees in here I course with electricity from my feet to my tongue Where I vomit a torque-delivering spark Zachary: (no notes for this poem). It's nicked at the edges And leans backwards, almost reclining Grass grows in tufts near where it enters the earth Its words are worn with time And its stained face is drawn long with wear Zachary: A headstone - A grave marker near Harvard square. http://www.jeffwofford.com/i76_poems.html# It's malleable, my design Things just bolt on here and there Real clean scraped face A new gasket fitted and... Tightened and... I'm done. Zachary: Designing cars. She's my girl Pearl white, slick and sexy Never complains, always faithful She cuts the air like a charging buffalo In her arms, it's quiet Her engine whispers to me: "It's gonna be just fine" Zachary: Taurus's feelings about Eloise - his car. They twist like quad-coiled vipers Feeding on combustion's waste Black as ink and hot as Hades they join below Eternally in shadow, unless of course, I roll They belt a rumbling and vibrate fear Into the bones of my foe Zachary: Exhaust headers... It's not a happy place, between the dusk and the dawn Deep below the well-lit and open spaces I wait under the under For them to come and rip me asunder Tearing my core until morning Zachary: It was from Taurus's mind - the torment of the murder. Glass, flat and forever It stretches out and never stops Unless it finds the hills whose lines rise to mountain peaks Far as far can be Zachary: This one and the next are simply about the freedom Taurus feels out in the desert - far from the constraint and memories of the city. There is a breeze out here That filters through the scrub Over hills and down through long dry riverbeds Across the Texas blacktop It cools the skin and brings the most subtle song in the world To the ears of those who listen Zachary: I grew up in the desert. It can be the most unbelievably beautiful place - I wanted to try and capture a little of it in words.